What happened to obama
As his approval ratings plunge and Democrats agonise whether they made a mistake by choosing him over a more combative Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, who has disappointed his liberal supporters, is struggling with his back to the wall — with the countdown to next year’s Presidential election round the corner
Ashish Kumar SenWhen Barack Obama took the oath as the first black president of the United States of America on a frigid January morning in 2009, he inherited a nation that was deeply divided, embroiled in two unpopular wars halfway across the globe and sliding speedily into the treacherous abyss of an economic recession.
Obama had run for office on a platform of hope and change. His energetic mantra — “Yes We Can” — won him legions of followers. Yet on that January morning, it was obvious to many, including the new president himself, that change would not come overnight.

Fifty FiftyMidnight In ParisNobody is quite happy with the present and the Woody Allen film feeds on our collective nostalgia for the past perfect
Kishwar desaiIt is perhaps one of the cleverest and funniest films I have seen in a long time ! While the London Film Festival is going on -I went off and saw Midnight in Paris which is not part of the festival fare---but encapsulates the director Woody Allen's oeuvre perfectly. I am an unabashed Woody Allen fan -and so I simply could not resist it!

On the Record
Musicians & students required to be techno-savvy by
Shahira NaimOne of the finest exponents of the Hindustani music gharana of Jaipur-Atrauli, 60-year old Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar is a unique combination of music scholar and performer.

PROFILE
Arms & the woman
BY Harihar SwarupShe is in her mid-thirties, a
mother of two children and a widow, who was given a lowly job in the Railways on compassionate grounds after the sudden and unexpected death of her husband. The tribal woman from West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district could then have lived an uneventful
life like millions of other faceless
women, who find themselves in
similar situations.

What happened to obama
As his approval ratings plunge and Democrats agonise whether they made a mistake by choosing him over a more combative Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, who has disappointed his liberal supporters, is struggling with his back to the wall — with the countdown to next year’s Presidential election round the corner
Ashish Kumar Sen

Members of the ‘Occupy Wall Street movement’ protest against New York financiers, whom they blame for the economic crisis that has struck countless ordinary Americans. — Reuters

When Barack Obama took the oath as the first black president of the United States of America on a frigid January morning in 2009, he inherited a nation that was deeply divided, embroiled in two unpopular wars halfway across the globe and sliding speedily into the treacherous abyss of an economic recession.

Obama had run for office on a platform of hope and change. His energetic mantra — “Yes We Can” — won him legions of followers. Yet on that January morning, it was obvious to many, including the new president himself, that change would not come overnight. The task before Obama was a Herculean one.

The sub prime mortgage crisis turned homeowners homeless; businesses were forced to shut; and the unemployment rate defied gravity. “These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics,” Obama said in his inaugural address. “Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.” He was under pressure from the start to deliver the “change” he had promised throughout his campaign. As early as 2009, Newsweek ran a cover story titled, “Yes He Can (But He Sure Hasn’t Yet).” It’s been nearly three years since Obama took office and polls show Americans are running out of patience.

It’s the economy

Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville cleverly coined the slogan: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Those words still hold true. Monthly employment statistics show the U.S. economy staggering towards and away from, but never quite reaching, an elusive recovery. And on those numbers hinge Obama’s political fortunes.

In the initial months of his presidency, members of the Obama administration and the president’s supporters and even the president himself were quick to point out that Obama’s predecessor had handed him a nation in the middle of a financial crisis and weighed down by a staggering deficit. The finger of blame was rightly pointed at George W. Bush. But as the months wore on and with no economic recovery in sight, Obama’s supporters acknowledge it is time for the president to take ownership of the problem.

In September, Obama unveiled a plan for economic growth and deficit reduction but evidence of voters’ frustration has been all over recent opinion polls. Most found that more people disapprove of Obama than approve. The state of the economy has been a major factor in Obama’s rising disapproval rating.

Obama’s supporters, who had hoped he would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, felt cheated when the president decided to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in a military surge in December of 2009. The president has since announced a plan to have most American troops back from Afghanistan by 2014. And in his State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress in January, he vowed to “finish the job of bringing our troops out of Iraq.”

Much of Obama’s political capital evaporated early on in his presidency as he made it his mission to ensure universal health care for Americans. The complex and controversial task eroded some of the goodwill he had earned as he gave in to Republican demands that left the new law a far-cry from its original template. In the end, most liberals, who make up Obama’s base, were unhappy with the measure. But the administration still touts the reform as something that “makes health care more affordable, holds insurers more accountable, expands coverage to all Americans and makes our health system sustainable.”

More hawkish?

An "Occupy Wall Street" campaign demonstrator reads "The Occupied Wall Street Journal", a newspaper published by the campaign. — Reuters

In August, the New York Times published a column under the headline “What Happened to Obama?” In it, author Drew Westin, a professor of psychology at Emory University and the author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” wrote: “Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue.”

Yet even Obama’s most die-hard critics acknowledge that he has delivered on many of his promises. On national security, they find it hard to fault the president’s record on an issue that is among the top concerns for most Americans in a post-9/11 nation. Obama’s record rivals that of his Republican predecessor. Republicans are traditionally considered more hawkish on national security issues than their Democratic counterparts.

Obama not only stuck with Bush’s covert and controversial programme of using unmanned Predator drones to kill terrorist suspects in Pakistan, under his presidency the number of such strikes has escalated significantly and high-profile terrorists have been eliminated.

Obama ordered a U.S. Navy SEALs team to storm a hideout in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad in May. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — who Bush had promised to smoke out of his mountain hideout — was killed in that operation. In September, a U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a firebrand Yemeni-American cleric who led al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The president has kept up a tough line with Pakistan, putting pressure on the government in Islamabad and the military in Rawalpindi to take on extremists that target U.S. forces and American interests in Afghanistan. Some of these groups also target Indian interests in Afghanistan. In fact U.S.-Pakistan relations have become strained in recent weeks over Washington’s insistence that the Pakistani military crack down on the militant Haqqani Network that operates from safe havens inside Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency sever ties with the group. These tough words are music to the ears of the foreign service mandarins in New Delhi that have spent years trying to convince U.S. administrations of Pakistani duplicity in the war against terrorists.

On the world stage, Obama has sought to restore U.S. leadership by becoming more active in international organisations including the United Nations. He has worked to mend relations with nations, including Cold War foe Russia, with which he has sought to “reset” ties frayed during Bush’s term in office.

Mixed bag

On its website, the White House lists the administration’s foreign policy successes. These include: new policy steps towards Cuba and Obama’s call for a “new beginning” between the U.S. and the Muslim world. Obama spoke of the importance of democracy in a speech in Cairo in June of 2009. “You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion,” he told his audience. The remarks were at the time interpreted as a jab at the autocratic leaders in the Arab world who clung to power for decades. Yet, when the winds of the Arab Spring began to blow across the region earlier this year, the Obama administration was reluctant to call on Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Moammar Gadhafi of Libya to step down. Many in the Muslim world interpreted this reluctance to side with the pro-democracy protesters as hypocrisy when considered in the backdrop of Obama’s Cairo speech.

At home, Obama has ended the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that barred openly gay servicemen and women from serving in the U.S. military. That action earned him kudos from the human rights community.

There are some promises the president has found a challenge to fulfill. Prominent among these was his vow to shut down the U.S. military detention centre at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The prison was the site of shocking abuse of prisoners by their guards on Bush’s watch. Soon after he took office, Obama signed an executive order in which he ordered the prison to be closed. But Guantanamo Bay remains a functioning prison even today.

Obama’s approval ratings have moved downwards since he took office. In spite of that, a Pew Research poll found Obama emerging as the top choice in a hypothetical race with the top Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. The poll found that most of Obama’s supporters viewed their vote as a vote for the president, while most of those who planned to vote for Romney or Perry saw their vote as a vote against Obama.

But opinions tend to be fickle and polls often are not an accurate barometer of a candidate’s political fortunes. Bush’s approval ratings hovered around 50 per cent on the eve of the terrorists attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington on September 11, 2001. The attacks prompted the country to rally around the president and Bush’s approval soared to 90 per cent, the highest it would ever be over the span of his 8-year presidency. The Republican Party’s spin masters played up the threat of another such attack and a terrorised electorate handed Bush a second term.

When he faces re-election in 2012, Obama’s biggest political advantage is unlikely to be his own record, but will more likely to be the so-far lacklustre field of opponents that awaits him. Still, it will take a noticeable improvement in America’s economic health to guarantee Obama four more years in the White House.

JOKES HAUNTING OBAMA

n
America once had Johny Cash, Steve Jobs and Bob Hope. Now it has Barack Obama, no cash, no jobs and no hope.

n
Why is Obama more popular in China and India than in America? Because he created jobs over there.

WHERE HAS THE INSPIRATION GONE?

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we have been waiting for; we are the change that we seek. (Obama four years ago)

Fifty FiftyMidnight In ParisNobody is quite happy with the present and the Woody Allen film feeds on our collective nostalgia for the past perfect
Kishwar desai

It is perhaps one of the cleverest and funniest films I have seen in a long time ! While the London Film Festival is going on -I went off and saw Midnight in Paris which is not part of the festival fare---but encapsulates the director Woody Allen's oeuvre perfectly. I am an unabashed Woody Allen fan -and so I simply could not resist it!

It is both poignant and comic -tapping effortlessly into our collective nostalgia for a more glorious era. It reminds us of a very human failing: of how no one is really happy with the here and now. And how we often look back and think that there must have been better days before the comparatively shabby times we live in. The past always seems (somehow) happier than the present. And of course, don't we love thinking back of a time when life was simpler, less hurried ---and when real intellectuals existed ?

Doesn't the present always seem, somehow far too superficial and everyone too full of their own self interest ? Thus, as in the film, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could step out of our homes and be magically swept into a gentler, kinder past. At least that is the premise that Allen puts before us ---and it is a sweet little fantasy that succeeds completely in beguiling the viewer.

Thus the hero, played by Owen Wilson, is a Californian 'Hollywood hack' who comes to Paris only to yearn for the 1930s -when Picasso, Matisse and Gertrude Stein had lived there. His wish comes true and he is transported back in time -only to fall in love with Adriana, Picasso's muse. And then he discovers that for Adriana the La Belle Epoch was still further back in time, in the 1890s---when Degas, Gauguin and Toulouse Lautrec had lived in Paris. And so on…Thus proving the axiom that we are all nostalgic for something, somewhere ---which is always better than the times we live in.

Every baby counts

Midnight in Paris also stars the delectable Carla Bruni (though before her pregnancy) as a tourist guide. One wonders how many First Wives would have the aplomb to undertake a role like that ? She plays her part casually, in a pair of jeans and a shirt and exchanges a few remarks about Rodin. Tres magnifique! -as one may say. Now that Bruni has already established that she is a left leaning singer as well as actor - are there going to be more roles in store ? The Nicholas -Carla show often beats the Barak-Michele pair at the hustings-and with this performance the ratings for Carla Bruni should go up even further! And now that Carla is also pregnant-the world awaits with bated breath for the French baby which will change the Sarkozy fortunes and (according to the pundits) even defeat the socialist contenders. Who says political dynasties are unimportant elsewhere in the world? Every baby counts !

However, despite the temporary Bruni distraction, Midnight in Paris has been Allen's most successful film in recent years ---earning millions at the box office. Like all his other movies-it does have a very simple straightforward narrative, and the bumbling protagonist, Owen Wilson with a slightly large, bumpy nose, looks like a spruced up and better looking version of the maestro himself. The film is very simply produced -without any gimmicks ---and our hero is transported back into time through the device of an ancient car which pulls up at a kerb, every midnight-and whisks him back into the era that he, as an author, most covets. Allen's master-stroke is in creating a Paris which is indeed enviable. Thus Wilson bumps into F Scott Fritzgerald and his wife Zelda -as well as Earnest Hemingway and T.S Eliot. Of course, Allen has to use visual and verbal shortcuts to introduce each character -and at times this is not entirely subtle. For instance, when Hemingway appears, there are far too obvious references to his war years and boxing mania. Similarly, when he elopes with Picasso's muse -he is said to have gone to Kilimanjaro! However-nonetheless, the film is almost a homage to these great writers, poets and painters who created the Paris of the 1920s -and it must have indeed been wonderful.

Allen has also set many scenes in Gertrude Stein's home -where these intellectual giants met for her sage advice, and these too are extremely evocative and believable-as Picasso and Matisse walk in and out and discuss their angst with their mentor. Owen's interaction with the surrealists Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali is amusing - and obviously Allen has fun with our fascination with these characters who have dominated our art, literature and cinema ever since. Bunuel and Dali, of course, were contemporaries in Paris and even worked on a film together.

India at midnight

So I began to wonder what such a film would be called if it were made in India, and which era would it be set in? And which city ? Could we call it Midnight in Delhi, for instance and set it in the 1920/30s, -and have the screen peopled with Jawaharlal Nehru, M.K.Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, M.F. Husain, Sarojini Naidu ? Perhaps they could be all at a dinner together ? Or should it be set in Bombay of the 40s and 50s and we could have Guru Dutt , Madhubala, Sahir Ludhianvi, Amrita Pritam…or should it be set even further back during Mirza Ghalib's time -or during Tansen's time ? In fact ---which era was India's most glorious age and which produced our most powerful thinkers, writers, singers, poets, dancers?…..I am still wondering…I know it would make an amazing film -and perhaps we should ask Woody Allen to direct it !

On the Record
Musicians & students required to be techno-savvy
by Shahira Naim

One of the finest exponents of the Hindustani music gharana of Jaipur-Atrauli, 60-year old Shruti Sadolikar-Katkar is a unique combination of music scholar and performer.

A masters from SNDT University, she wrote her thesis on Haveli Sangeet , a type of temple music. Her voice was selected as one of the most remarkable voices among nine female singers from all over the world for the CD 'Gifted Women of the World' released and marketed by the Noa perfume of Paris.

Now the Vice Chancellor of the renowned Bhatkhande Music Institute University in Lucknow, she is attempting to uphold the glorious legacy of the institution set up by Pundit Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande way back in 1926.

Taking up the challenge of adapting to keep pace with the changing times, Sadolikar is introducing new job-oriented courses related to music.

With your credentials as a singer and scholar why did you accept an administrative job ?

Well, I received a call from the Raj Bhawan at Lucknow. Just around that time I had started working at the Bombay University. The then Governor said that he required my services here at Bhatkhande University.

Serving this institution is certainly not a job for me. It is a post of honor. I must say that it has been a very eventful two and a half years, slightly turbulent at times, but satisfying never the less.

What were the hurdles you faced ?

It was more a change of work culture. I was used to a work culture where every minute is precious. Here things are a little laid back, which initially hampered my style. But then I decided not to quit as a loser and slowly we have reached a golden median where things are working out.

When did you feel you had matured as a singer?

I have been performing from a very early age and was always under the impression that I know my art form.

My guru Gulubhai Jasdanwala had a rare and large collection of raga compositions, some of them were tapes and records of exclusive baithaks organised by him. I spent considerable time with him listening to this rare treasure. Once he casually remarked that he was waiting to hear me mature as a singer. I felt slightly offended as I was around 20 years old and thought that I had matured.

He explained that I had acquired all the knowledge but was yet to digest it. Now that I look back, I realise that at that time music came as a reflex - it acquires a certain depth or 'thehrav' only after a life long process of chintan-manan (introspection).

The more you grow as a person, the more collected you become as a singer. It is a holistic growth as one's world view, values; lifestyle has a deep bearing on one's music, or for that matter, any form of expression that one chooses. It becomes a vehicle not just to connect to the immediate material world but to reach out to the Sublime.

The Indian art forms are best passed on from one generation to the next through the time-tested
Guru-shishya parampara. Where do music schools like the Bhatkhande University fit in?

Our educational system is partly responsible for that. Even so many years after independence we have not been able to evolve a system that nurtures the inherent creativity of a person. The system is still fit to produce only babus.

Indian music, unlike western classical, is far more subjective where the artists not only reproduce musical treatises but render it with his or her subjective creativity, giving it a unique identity of its own. Sadly, this is difficult to acquire through 50 minute lectures.

Music schools are, however, good to produce music scholars and knowledgeable connoisseurs which are also an integral part of the music fraternity.

What is the background of students who come to your institute?

Most of them are from middle or lower middle class families. Around 40 per cent of them come to acquire a degree as that might help them get a job.

What is then your vision for Bhatkhande University?

As the world is getting increasingly technologically savvy, our students should also have the benefit of the latest technology. Making them computer-friendly and helping them learn the latest sound and recording techniques so that they can find a toe-hold in the expanding sound recording industry is one of my priorities.

In spite of mastering music, they often do not know how to handle a microphone or the sound equipment in a sophisticated studio. We are soon to start courses in sound recording, music direction and other aspects of the applied- side of music which can help them find jobs.

She is in her mid-thirties, a mother of two children and a widow, who was given a lowly job in the Railways on compassionate grounds after the sudden and unexpected death of her husband. The tribal woman from West Bengal's Jalpaiguri district could then have lived an uneventful life like millions of other faceless women , who find themselves in similar situations.

But then, Shanti Tigga was clearly made of sterner stuff. And the lady this month became the first woman combatant in the Territorial Army. Her recruitment as a jawan is hailed as the very first such recruitment by the 1.3 million strong Indian defence forces. While the Indian Army does recruit women, such recruitment was till now confined to the officer's ranks and generally in medical, education, administrative and legal sections. Now that Tigga has broken through the glass ceiling, many more women will hopefully get through.

She actually stood out at the Recruitment Training Camp (RTC), where she outperformed the men. She took far less time than the men in completing tasks, ran faster, displayed better marksmanship and exhibited far better understanding of how firearms are to be handled. She impressed her peers and trainers so much that she was declared the best trainee.

Tigga took 12 seconds to run 50 metres. While the timing was far from Olympic or the Asian record, it was actually excellent and will be vouched as such by those who have attempted running 50 metres or more. Indeed, when the trainees were asked to run a course stretching one and a half kilometers, she again was the first to touch the tape at the finishing line, taking five seconds less than the nearest male competitor.

Railways had employed her as a 'points man' (or woman) on compassionate grounds in the year 2005. She learnt about the Territorial Army last year and volunteered for it. At the time she was not aware that no woman had ever joined the army below the officer rank. It is difficult now to guess if the prior knowledge would have deterred her from taking her chances but with her fine performance, such hypothetical questions have lost their relevance.

She claims it was always her dream to don the olive green uniform. Judging by her performance in rifle shooting, it would appear she had a fascination for firearms as well. Some of her relatives are in the armed forces, she disclosed , when she was presented before the media after her recruitment, and they were the ones, who motivated her to take her chances. She is clearly industrious and has a mind of her own. The gritty lady appears certain to make the army proud.